Computer systems routinely attempt to deliver messages to a wide variety of subscribers. In a health care system, for example, attempts may be made to deliver a message including clinical results to one or more subscribers, such as a subscriber that maintains an electronic medical record of the patient so as to permit the electronic medical record to be updated with the clinical results.
The delivery of a message to a subscriber may sometimes fail. The delivery of a message may fail for various reasons including, for example, the unavailability or the limited availability of a subscriber system. Alternatively, the delivery of a message may fail as a result of a network error, a format error or an error associated with authentication and/or credentialing, etc.
In an instance in which the delivery of a message has failed, a computer system may try to repeatedly deliver the message in an effort to successfully reach the subscriber. In this regard, the computer system may attempt to deliver the message a predefined number of times prior to considering the message to be undeliverable. In order to control the retry attempts, a computer system may update a counter that maintains a count of the number of retry attempts. These retry attempts may be made at fixed intervals or in response to manual input. Despite the repeated attempts to deliver the message, the delivery of the message may be considered to have failed in an instance in which the counter that maintains a count of the number of retry attempts that have been made equals or exceeds a predefined limit.
In instance in which the delivery of the message has failed, the computer system may be disadvantaged in that the subscriber does not receive notification of the message. In instances in which the subscriber is aware that the delivery of the message has failed, the computer system or the parties relying upon or otherwise utilizing the computer system may additionally suffer from a corresponding loss of reputation. Moreover, even if the computer system is capable of successfully delivering the message following one or more retry attempts, the overall efficiency with which the message was delivered may be diminished as a result of the processing effort and memory resources devoted to the scheduling and performance of the retry attempt as well as any manual input required to trigger the retry attempts.